Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalization

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Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalization

I purchased a case of plastic 1 pound bottles to sell honey in. These are rather attractive to the eye where they have hexagonal bee cells on their sides with a wide top.

I have kept my bottling tank at about 90 degrees and some of the honey that I put into my bottles have started crystalizing.

So I use the old heat up the water trick on a pot on the stove - once it gets to boiling, I remove the pot from the burner and then set my plastic jars of honey within them, which does the trick of removing the crystalization.

However the down side is that it warps/misshapes my plastic bottles. Does anyone else have this problem. It almost looks like a defect in the manufacturer process to a point that once I empty out my plastic stock that i would go to glass.

Now, I could set my temperature up in my bottling tank to be higher. But then I got to thinking that if I had these plastic bottles of honey already on the shelf, then I would need to use the hot water approach and I would have warped bottles.

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

That's way too hot. When I have those plastic bottles that are crystallized, I heat a large container of water until it gets to about 125 degrees. I remove it from the heat, place the bottles in it, put the lid on and leave over night.

By morning everything is cool and the honey is liquid again. Once in a while if the honey in the bottles was completely solid I might have to do it twice.

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

I bottle in both. I have used those wide mouth plastic bottles that I think you are talking about. They use white lids? Now I use the narrower mouth ones that I can use the flip top lids for. Neither will do well in very hot water or the microwave.

I also use quart jars. I do the same with them. I try not to heat the honey too much, so I heat the water to the low 120's and then add the jars. I don't think that the honey itself get heated too much because the water starts cooling at the same time as the honey starts warming.

I use a large canner, add the jars, fill with water to the level that I want, remove the jars, heat the water and then add the jars back to the warm water. The more water you use the slower it will cool.

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

I believe that the highest temp that raw honey should be exposed to is +105F in order to preserve the natural enzymes.
The actual temp is debated, however there is no doubt about heat being the enemy of honeys natural powers.

BM

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JOHN F. KENNEDY -

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

It depends on how fast you want them to go away. I heat the water to 120-125 knowing that only the very outside layer of honey will actually get to that temperature. I don't really use the water bath any more since I built a refrigerator with a light bulb and thermostat.

I now keep my extra honey at 85-95 in the refrigerator. I have read that 15 minutes at 150 degrees is less harmful than 105 for a week. I tend to think that there is something to that. When I first set up the refrigerator I kept the temperature at 95-100. Over a year my honey darkened in there. I have lowered it now to the 85-95 and don't notice much change, but honey that I have kept in the freezer seems completely unchanged.

I did liquify some honey by keeping it in the refrigerator (heater) for a couple of months at the 95-100 degree temps. I don't actually remember how long it took.

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

I really could bump my temp up in the bottling tank It is set for about 90-95 degrees. -- My honey is liquid, but when I put it into the bottle, I can see crystals floating in the honey and it doesn't look attractive to me.

This weekend, I will do experiments on both temperature of water and length of time that honey sits in water in order to remove the crystals.

One night, I had heated up the water and then took it off the stove and then set a bottle of honey into it. The next morning, when I removed the bottle from the water, the flat plastic jar that went into the hot water batch is now mostly round.

So I changed my process to heat up the water, remove it from the stove and set my plastic bottles for no more than 30 minutes. And the crystals are removed and the bottles are misshapen so that my labels don't lie flat on it as they did originally.

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

BeeDeeTee,

Thanks -- Last night, I bumped my bottling tank up to 125 degrees - Still had crystalization of honey go into the plastic bottles -- warmed my water on stove to 140 degrees and the crystallation was removed and the plastic bottles retained the shape without any warping

Re: Honey Bottles Warping while using Hot Water bath approach to remove Crystalizatio

Personally, I wouldn't use plastic for bottling honey. Yup, it's cheaper then glass, your margins might be higher, but for what end. I don't believe storing food products in plastic is healthy. Some food products don't come in anything other than plastic, so what choice do you have. I know this, I have never had a glass bottle warp while reheating to reverse the crystalization.